The Wheel Turns Round
by Songcrystal
Summary: Rumplestiltskin, trapped in madness, dreams of the love he lost. Rumbelle, set after the events of "Witch Hunt."
1. The Wheel Begins to Move

In the cage, the madman sang, his voice trembling, the singsong, tuneless lyrics a broken lilt as his hands mimicked the familiar rhythm of a spinning wheel long lost to this world.

"_The wheel goes round_

_And the wheel goes round_

_The straw comes up_

_And the gold rains down_

_He dreams a girl_

_With copper hair_

_Sea blue eyes_

_And skin so fair_

_Fairer still her loyal heart_

_Beating fit to rend her apart,"_

At this last hissed line, his hands ripped away from their invisible task. He raised them up, tracing a shape with long, artistic fingers, ragged nails caressing their way around what only he could see – a small, chipped teacup that had no value to anyone. He resumed his song.

"_Her lover lost, a fallen star_

_Drawing nearer eternal dark."_

His hands dropped to his sides as he laughed softly. These moments were the worst, when the darkness in his heart was illuminated for a brief moment, when the man he once had been flickered to life like a dying candle's last embers. For only then could he see her clearly, her beauty radiant from within as well as without.

He remembered dying. Losing himself in the knowledge that for once in his life, he had taken the unselfish route, protecting his son and dearest love, and those who they cherished. Protecting the people who had become, if not friends, at least less than enemies.

And yet, here he was once more, chained to the dark. In the dark. Becoming more a part of the dark than he had been since first meeting Belle. Knowing that he deserved his fate. _Pitch black soul, like tar on a shoe, ebony wood and bloodstained yew…_

She had been his student, long ago. Worse, if what she suspected were true, his flesh and blood.

It interrupted the rhythm, the rhyme of his world, and he reached down to claw at the chains that bound his ankle so ingloriously.

The sound from above wrenched his from his scrabbling around in the dust, and he looked up, feeling more than seeing the flare of magic that flickered at the edge of his senses.

The world trembled. The bowl that held his filthy repast rattled off its tray and shattered into jagged white pieces.

A key turned in a lock.

Inside him, he felt the flood of it like a drug, searing and sizzling and perfect. The magic swirled through his veins like a vile tempest, whispering wonderfully lovely words like "kill" and "incinerate" and best of all, "_Revenge_."

He pointed a sharp nail at the lock, and it disintegrated, joining the piles of dust on the floor. He pointed again, and the remaining bowl, the tray, the very cage itself shared the same fate.

The same fate his wayward student would share when he caught up to her.

If a little voice kept singing in his head, of a beautiful girl who saw something more than the demon who fled up the stairs and into the starless night, the Dark One, singer of things restless and relentless, crushed it beneath his wild shout of glee, reveling in a freedom from morality that only the mad understand.


	2. A is for Apple

A is for apple. And the apple is temptation. All affairs begin with it. The women end with it.

_Milah._

_Cora._

_Zelena._

_Regina._

And all affairs - real or imagined, wished-for, yearned for, addicted to, end messily.

The night is wide and cruel and empty, like his heart. He fills his lungs with breath, gulping greedily. Lithe and fleet as any demon, he feels himself nearly soaring through the woods. The edge brings him up short. The town line, blazing in his mind's eye like a dazzling gold streak of magic, taunts him. Here lies release, it whispers. Here lies your death.

But a small corner of his mind is yet reserved. There is a woman, and she does not end in apples. A boy, who fathered a boy, who is no longer a boy but a man. Yet, still...

No one needs him. She has told him of the time that passed. She has told him how they moved on, learned to forget. Love, fear, all feelings fade with time. But not the Dark One's hunger. The small corner of his mind cowers behind it. He does not cross the town line, but it is not love that keeps him from racing towards it. At last, it is no longer even fear. It is the hunger.

As the anger surges through him, the desperate yearning to count the bones beneath the mirage, and the emerald skin she hides underneath it, and to gently, softly snap each one until she is broken to pieces, even then that small still corner of his mind clings to one last prayer.

In the tiniest singsong whisper, he chants to himself, backing away from the line one step at a time.

_A is for Apple._

_B is for Belle._


End file.
